The One Year Bible TLB (212 page)
Read The One Year Bible TLB Online
Authors: Tyndale
It is wrong to sentence the poor and let the rich go free.
24
He who says to the wicked, “You are innocent,” shall be cursed by many people of many nations;
25
but blessings shall be showered on those who rebuke sin fearlessly.
October 6Yet the Lord pleads with you still: Ask where the good road is, the godly paths you used to walk in, in the days of long ago. Travel there, and you will find rest for your souls. But you reply, “No, that is not the road we want!”
17
I set watchmen over you who warned you: “Listen for the sound of the trumpet! It will let you know when trouble comes.” But you said, “No! We won’t pay any attention!”
18-19
This, then, is my decree against my people: (Listen to it, distant lands; listen to it, O my people in Jerusalem; listen to it, all the earth!) I will bring evil upon this people; it will be the fruit of their own sin because they will not listen to me. They reject my law.
20
There is no use now in burning sweet incense from Sheba before me! Keep your expensive perfumes! I cannot accept your offerings; they have no sweet fragrance for me.
21
I will make an obstacle course of the pathway of my people; fathers and sons shall be frustrated; neighbors and friends shall collapse together.
22
The Lord God says: See the armies marching from the north—a great nation is rising against you.
23
They are a cruel, merciless people, fully armed, mounted for war. The noise of their army is like a roaring sea.
24
We have heard the fame of their armies, and we are weak with fright. Fright and pain have gripped us like that of women in travail.
25
Don’t go out to the fields! Don’t travel the roads! For the enemy is everywhere, ready to kill; we are terrorized at every turn.
26
O Jerusalem, pride of my people, put on mourning clothes and sit in ashes; weep bitterly as for an only son. For suddenly the destroying armies will be upon you.
27
Jeremiah, I have made you an assayer of metals that you may test this my people and determine their value. Listen to what they are saying and watch what they are doing.
28
Are they not the worst of rebels, full of evil talk against the Lord? They are insolent as brass, hard and cruel as iron.
29
The bellows blow fiercely; the refining fire grows hotter, but it can never cleanse them, for there is no pureness in them to bring out. Why continue the process longer? All is dross. No matter how hot the fire, they continue in their wicked ways.
30
I must label them “Impure, Rejected Silver,” and I have discarded them.
7:
1
Then the Lord said to Jeremiah:
2
Go over to the entrance of the Temple of the Lord and give this message to the people: O Judah, listen to this message from God. Listen to it, all of you who worship here.
3
The Lord, the God of Israel says: Even yet, if you quit your evil ways, I will let you stay in your own land.
4
But don’t be fooled by those who lie to you and say that since the Temple of the Lord is here, God will never let Jerusalem be destroyed.
5
You may remain under these conditions only: If you stop your wicked thoughts and deeds and are fair to others;
6
if you stop exploiting orphans, widows, and foreigners, and stop your murdering; if you stop worshiping idols as you do now to your hurt,
7
then, and only then, will I let you stay in this land that I gave to your fathers to keep forever.
8
You think that because the Temple is here, you will never suffer? Don’t fool yourselves!
9
Do you really think that you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and worship Baal and all of those new gods of yours,
10
and then come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, “We are saved!”—only to go right back to all these evil things again?
11
Is my Temple but a den of robbers in your eyes? For I see all the evil going on in there.
12
Go to Shiloh, the city I first honored with my name, and see what I did to her because of all the wickedness of my people Israel.
13-14
And now, says the Lord, I will do the same thing here because of all this evil you have done. Again and again I spoke to you about it, rising up early and calling, but you refused to hear or answer. Yes, I will destroy this Temple, as I did in Shiloh—this Temple called by my name, which you trust for help, and this place I gave to you and to your fathers.
15
And I will send you into exile, just as I did your brothers, the people of Ephraim.
16
Pray no more for these people, Jeremiah. Neither weep for them nor pray nor beg that I should help them, for I will not listen.
17
Don’t you see what they are doing throughout the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
18
No wonder my anger is great! Watch how the children gather wood and the fathers build fires, and the women knead dough and make cakes to offer to the Queen of Heaven
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and to their other idol-gods!
19
Am I the one that they are hurting? asks the Lord. Most of all they hurt themselves, to their own shame.
20
So the Lord God says: I will pour out my anger, yes, my fury on this place—people, animals, trees, and plants will be consumed by the unquenchable fire of my anger.
21
The Lord, the God of Israel says: Away with your offerings and sacrifices!
22
It wasn’t offerings and sacrifices I wanted from your fathers when I led them out of Egypt. That was not the point of my command.
23
But what I told them was:
Obey
me, and I will be your God and you shall be my people; only do as I say, and all shall be well!
24
But they wouldn’t listen; they kept on doing whatever they wanted to, following their own stubborn, evil thoughts. They went backward instead of forward.
25
Ever since the day your fathers left Egypt until now, I have kept on sending them my prophets, day after day.
26
But they wouldn’t listen to them or even try to hear. They are hard and stubborn and rebellious—worse even than their fathers were.
27
Tell them everything that I will do to them, but don’t expect them to listen. Cry out your warnings, but don’t expect them to respond.
28
Say to them: “This is the nation that refuses to obey the Lord its God and refuses to be taught. She continues to live a lie.”
29
O Jerusalem, shave your head in shame and weep alone upon the mountains; for the Lord has rejected and forsaken this people of his wrath.
30
For the people of Judah have sinned before my very eyes, says the Lord. They have set up their idols right in my own Temple, polluting it.
31
They have built the altar called Topheth in the valley of Ben-hinnom, and there they burn to death their little sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods—a deed so horrible I’ve never even thought of it, let alone commanded it to be done.
32
The time is coming, says the Lord, when that valley’s name will be changed from Topheth or Ben-hinnom Valley, to the Valley of Slaughter; for there will be so many slain to bury that there won’t be room enough for all the graves, and they will dump the bodies in that valley.
33
The bodies of my people shall be food for the birds and animals, and no one shall be left to scare them away.
34
I will end the happy singing and laughter and the joyous voices of the bridegrooms and brides in the streets of Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah. For the land shall lie in desolation.
8:
1
Then, says the Lord, the enemy shall break open the graves of the kings of Judah and of the princes, and the graves of the priests, prophets, and people,
2
and dig out their bones and spread them out on the ground before the sun and moon and stars—the gods of my people!—whom they have loved and worshiped. Their bones shall not be gathered up again nor buried but shall be scattered like dung upon the ground.
3
And those of this evil nation who are still left alive shall long to die rather than live where I will scatter them, says the Lord Almighty.
4-5
Once again give them this message from the Lord: When a person falls, he jumps up again; when he is on the wrong road and discovers his mistake, he goes back to the fork where he made the wrong turn. But these people keep on along their evil path, even though I warn them.
6
I listen to their conversation and what do I hear? Is anyone sorry for sin? Does anyone say, “What a terrible thing I have done”? No, all are rushing pell-mell down the path of sin as swiftly as a horse rushing to the battle!
7
The stork knows the time of her migration, as does the turtledove, the crane, and the swallow. They all return at God’s appointed time each year; but not my people! They don’t accept the laws of God.
Don’t let others spoil your faith and joy with their philosophies, their wrong and shallow answers built on men’s thoughts and ideas, instead of on what Christ has said.
9
For in Christ there is all of God in a human body;
10
so you have everything when you have Christ,
and you are filled with God through your union with Christ. He is the highest Ruler, with authority over every other power.
11
When you came to Christ, he set you free from your evil desires, not by a bodily operation of circumcision but by a spiritual operation, the baptism of your souls.
12
For in baptism you see how your old, evil nature died with him and was buried with him; and then you came up out of death with him into a new life because you trusted the Word of the mighty God who raised Christ from the dead.
13
You were dead in sins, and your sinful desires were not yet cut away. Then he gave you a share in the very life of Christ, for he forgave all your sins,
14
and blotted out the charges proved against you, the list of his commandments which you had not obeyed. He took this list of sins and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.
15
In this way God took away Satan’s power to accuse you of sin, and God openly displayed to the whole world Christ’s triumph at the cross where your sins were all taken away.
16
So don’t let anyone criticize you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating Jewish holidays and feasts or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths.
17
For these were only temporary rules that ended when Christ came. They were only shadows of the real thing—of Christ himself.
18
Don’t let anyone declare you lost when you refuse to worship angels, as they say you must. They have seen a vision, they say, and know you should. These proud men (though they claim to be so humble) have a very clever imagination.
19
But they are not connected to Christ, the Head to which all of us who are his body are joined; for we are joined together by his strong sinews, and we grow only as we get our nourishment and strength from God.
20
Since you died, as it were, with Christ and this has set you free from following the world’s ideas of how to be saved—by doing good and obeying various rules
*
—why do you keep right on following them anyway, still bound by such rules as
21
not eating, tasting, or even touching certain foods?
22
Such rules are mere human teachings, for food was made to be eaten and used up.
23
These rules may seem good, for rules of this kind require strong devotion and are humiliating and hard on the body, but they have no effect when it comes to conquering a person’s evil thoughts and desires. They only make him proud.
O my people, listen to my teaching. Open your ears to what I am saying.
2-3
For I will show you lessons from our history, stories handed down to us from former generations.
4
I will reveal these truths to you so that you can describe these glorious deeds of Jehovah to your children and tell them about the mighty miracles he did.
5
For he gave his laws to Israel and commanded our fathers to teach them to their children,
6
so that they in turn could teach their children too. Thus his laws pass down from generation to generation.
7
In this way each generation has been able to obey his laws and to set its hope anew on God and not forget his glorious miracles.
8
Thus they did not need to be as their fathers were—stubborn, rebellious, unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.
9
The people of Ephraim, though fully armed, turned their backs and fled when the day of battle came
10
because they didn’t obey his laws. They refused to follow his ways.
11-12
And they forgot about the wonderful miracles God had done for them and for their fathers in Egypt.
13
For he divided the sea before them and led them through! The water stood banked up along both sides of them!
14
In the daytime he led them by a cloud, and at night by a pillar of fire.
15
He split open the rocks in the wilderness to give them plenty of water, as though gushing from a spring.
16
Streams poured from the rock, flowing like a river!
17
Yet they kept on with their rebellion, sinning against the God who is above all gods.
18
They murmured and complained, demanding other food than God was giving them.
19-20
They even spoke against God himself. “Why can’t he give us decent food as well as water?” they grumbled.
21
Jehovah heard them and was angry; the fire of his wrath burned against Israel
22
because they didn’t believe in God or trust in him to care for them,
23
even though he commanded the skies to open—he opened the windows of heaven—
24
and rained down manna for their food. He gave them bread from heaven!
25
They ate angels’ food! He gave them all they could hold.
26
And he led forth the east wind and guided the south wind by his mighty power.
27
He rained down birds as thick as dust, clouds of them like sands along the shore!
28
He caused the birds to fall to the ground among the tents.
29
The people ate their fill. He gave them what they asked for.
30
But they had hardly finished eating, and the meat was yet in their mouths,
31
when the anger of the Lord rose against them and killed the finest of Israel’s young men.